In a remarkable example of how bad information can travel far and wide, dozens of media outlets around the world have said Umar Abdulmutallab was traveling on a one-way ticket to Detroit when he allegedly tried to blow up Flight 253, even though that has never been substantiated and appears to be flat wrong.
Abdulmutallab's "one-way ticket" has been cited in recent days by the AP, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, even though the Nigerian government said Dec. 28 that Abdulmutall...

As a Canadian I marvel at all of these terms that are so common to Americans, but are virtually unknown to us.
Here's a partial list off the top of my head:
1. "Out of network"
There are no "networks" in Canada. Doctors and hospitals are not affiliated with private insurance companies. Doctors are private business entities and hospitals are usually run by non-profit boards or regional health associations.
2. "COBRA"
Health coverage is NOT tied to your place of employment in any way. So any CO...

And not because of the 3,000 killed in the attack. although it was an attack that rivalled Pearl Harbor (2403 dead) in it's scope. And 9/11 remains the largest single loss of life in a single terrorist act and one of the greatest crimes ever.
No, the WORST part was that it happened during the George Bush administration, the most rabid and bloodthirsty collection of warhawks and neocons (redundancy, I know) ever to inhabit the halls of American power.
I remember thinking that as I saw those tow...

(Image)
Pope Benedict XVI is to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity but only to purge the Church of corrupt practices.
Pope Benedict will issue his findings on Luther (1483-1546) in September after discussing him at his annual seminar of 40 fellow theologians — known as the Ratzinger Schülerkreis — at Castelgandolfo, the papal summer residence. According to Vatican insiders the Pope will argue that Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for he...

It was the first time I'd really watched it. What a load of codswallop!
I had a half-smile on my face the whole time, waiting for the next atrocious, absurd little nugget of wisdom that came out of the character's mouths.
It was like watching an ideological version of Dudley Do-Right, with the rugged, heroic individualist Howard Roarke as Dudley and the evil, scheming collectivist Elsworth Toohey as Snidely Whiplash. I actually laughed out loud at some of the most outrageous statements.
Our T...

UBC Local 27 (Toronto) and Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Local 975.
In the former, I was a laborer in construction working for my father, making money for my tuition.
In the latter, well, that was a different story. I started a union in my workplace.
Working at my first job in electronics, I got fed up with our owner. It was a small company, about 40 people, with all job descriptions from cleaning staff to engineers.
But the boss was a real piece of work. He practically WAS Montgom...

Last Wednesday, my wife told me that she fainted at work. She was standing up talking to someone when she got dizzy and felt herself start to lose consciousness. A nurse at the workplace (she works in a big government building) checked her out and thought she was OK, but recommended going to a doctor.
So, my wife decided to go to our local doctor's clinic on Friday. The clinic was canceled for the day, so we went to the nearby hospital emergency instead. It's a small, regional hospital but it s...

How has this government managed to acquire so much power, yet screw it up so badly?
They have powerful "think tanks". And polling groups. And legal advisors. And public relations gurus. And political "dirty tricks" wizards. And military experts. And the DC pundit class. And a compliant, spineless, unquestioning and sycophantic media. Even an entire network devoted to singing their praises.
How could they lose?
And yet, they are. Day by day, they're losing the faithful supporters, the reluctan...

(Link)
externality is a cost or benefit from an economic transaction that parties "external" to the transaction bear. Externalities can be either positive, when an external benefit is generated, or negative, when an external cost is imposed upon others.
What does that mean? Well, an externality is an unintended "byproduct" of a corporate action. And despite the definition, externalities are rarely positive. Call it pollution, outsourcing, consumer non-responsiveness or excessive trademark liti...

-If an American Commander in Chief, Secretary of Defense or any other civilian official gives an illegal or fraudulent order which kills, injures or displaces innocent citizens of another country, impeachment and civil trials MUST be undertaken. Minimum sentence - 25 years and financial restitution to the victims or survivors.
The court will make provisions to provide a tired, overworked, underpaid and cynical public defender for the defendant's legal representation.

What is it that the RW pundits hate about San Fran? I'm perplexed.
Is it the Sourdough bread they don't like or the cable cars or the Golden Gate bridge? Maybe it's the Spanish-sounding name that sets them off? No, that's not it. San Antonio doesn't get the same scorn.
Is it because San Francisco is the second most densely populated city in the US? Nah, that can't be it.
Is it that they've survived almost complete disaster in the 1906 earthquake and fire and rebuilt themselves? Or that NONE o...

Who Knows Bush's Mind Best?
No, it's not Karl Rove. It's a 26-year-old whiz with no college degree
By MIKE ALLEN
The only words he ever says in public are, "This is the official two-minute warning for the press. Two minutes." He delivers them with effortless authority to vast crowds after placing President George W. Bush's note cards or speech text on the podium just so. His declarations sometimes cause networks to go live.
Blake Gottesman, a 26-year-old Texan who met the President when he was...

Although it's my opinion that nearly all of these points lead to a more simpler truth other than mere political power, although that's the primary means for staying around long enough to enact the plans.
No, this is all being done to embody an ideology of pure, unadulterated "corporatism", for lack of a better word. Not just the Adam Smith ideal of the "invisible hand", but a total dependence on the idea that profit-driven self-interest is THE guiding force of the Universe. In their world, EVE...

NEW YORK Little known to the American public, there are some 50,000 private contractors in Iraq, providing support for the U.S. military, among other activities. So why not go all the way, hints Ted Koppel in a New York Times op-ed on Monday, and form a real "mercenary army"?
Such a move involving what he calls "latter-day Hessians" would represent, he writes, "the inevitable response of a market economy to a host of seemingly intractable public policy and security problems."
~snip
"So, what ...

Kondracke denounced Qwest as "basically helping terrorists" for not giving customers' phone records to NSA
(Link)
Summary: On Fox News' Special Report, Roll Call executive editor Morton Kondracke said the telecommunications company Qwest was "basically helping terrorists" because "to its discredit, said it was not cooperating with the NSA and specifically decided not to cooperate" by providing the NSA with the phone call records of its customers. According to The New York Times, a lawyer rep...

I agree with you. These "Christians" do have a rather warped interpretation of what Christ actually said, when they even bother to quote him at all.
They should really call themselves "Old Testamenters", for their message of divine retribution, slaying of "enemies" and absurdly strict codes of behavior and thought. Nowhere to be found are the messages of peace, love for your neighbor, caring for the disadvantaged or tolerance for those you would normally disagree with. ``Inasmuch as ye have don...

Consider this. Here's a huge database of call records. Pretty innocuous, as most people's calling patterns don't make much sense to monitor. A small circle of friends, acquaintances, businesses.
But think about what a POLITICAL GOLDMINE this is.
Imagine having all the records of every call John Kerry ever made. Every person he talked to. Every organization he talked to or that contacted him. And when. Increased call frequency from Harry Reid's office could mean something big is about to happen...

Gore "Grew a beard and got weird"??
Chris,
Maybe growing a beard in your world equates to some kind of mental imbalance. I'll spare you the lecture on great men throughout history who wore beards and managed to become great despite this debilitating handicap.
And maybe a man who deeply cares about the destructive way we've been treating this world of ours is some kind of a nutcase to you.The environment is an issue that over 70% of the American people think needs more attention. The rest of...

I see this as a metaphor for the North American society. Waste is everywhere. Not "convenient" for you to save something? Throw it in the trash.
Food is wasted. Energy is wasted. Products are wasted.
I heard Guy James say something last night that I totally agree with. He said that future archaeologists who will be going through our trash heaps trying to study how we lived back in the 20th century will be amazed and appalled at our tendency to throw away perfectly good food or items.
And the ...

(Link)
9/11 survivor's toxic clothing sparks cancer fear
By Stephen White
THIS deadly 9/11 shirt contains so much asbestos it is feared thousands of the disaster's survivors could be hit with cancer.
The garment worn by survivor Yehuda Kaploun, 39, has 93,000 times higher levels of asbestos than normal - 47 TIMES the safety limit.
It is also saturated with toxic zinc, mercury, antimony, barium, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead and molybdenum.
More than a million tonnes of dust containing...

I don't care how sensitive your searching algorithms are, you're not going to catch every nuance of a conversation, especially between people who know each other very well or have pre-arranged some coded message.
You can catch something obvious, naturally, but then any self-respecting terrorist can easily deduce this happening. They know they're being spied on.
Hell, they could use some reference to a well-known event or saying in their own country and we'd miss it. We don't have the cultural ...

It pays no dividends other than to a small amount of contractors, who mostly spend on pet projects in the war zone.
As opposed to infrastructure spending or small-business loans or medical plans which show real returns for the people it's intended for - the citizens.
After all, this is your tax dollars being driven away in SUV's by unnamed couriers.

During the great Plagues of the Middle Ages, so many people died, that labor on the lord's estates became harder and harder to find.
Suddenly, the surviving peasants realized that they were in demand. They could ask for more money and even have a choice of who they worked for and where they got to work. And they found their pay more lucrative, too.
A lot of historical sociologists point to this time as the decline of the feudal system and the empowering of the common man. Almost overnight, th...

The right wing view is that there's plenty to go around, damage to the environment is vastly exaggerated and global warming is a myth.
It comes from listening to too much Limbaugh. But Limbaugh dismisses anything the left pays attention to.
For instance, I remember about 10 years ago when Limbaugh announced he got a new computer. He made a big deal out of the fact that he found the EnerStar options on his PC and when he realized what they were, he disabled them all, so now his PC was using the...

The whole point of protesting the voting machine irregularities is that it's so easy to cover up your tracks when cheating. These machines seem to be intentionally designed to have multiple "back doors" that could easily allow tampering without detection.
Any evidence of wrongdoing is just a bunch of ones and zeroes that are erased in a fraction of a second.
Poof! Like it never existed in the first place.
With real paper ballots, there's always a chance of fraud, but much harder to pull off. I...

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